I'VE JUST TAKEN A 90-MINUTE TRAIN RIDE southeast from Tokyo, past the industrial waterfront of Tokyo Bay and the rice fields of Chiba prefecture to the quiet fishing village of Ichinomiya. A jumble of small shops, two-story apartment buildings, and narrow, yardless homes on the Pacific Ocean, Ichinomiya is also the gateway to Japan's most popular surf region. In fact, somewhere nearby, Kelly Slater and the rest of the world's best surfers are competing in the Quiksilver Pro Japan, the seventh of 11 events in the world championship tour.

Only I don't know exactly where. The late-summer contest has a mobile start—organizers check the conditions along a 19-mile stretch of coast each morning and set up where the waves are breaking best. There were buses earlier in the day to take spectators to the correct beach. But after a night of Tokyo barhopping, I've arrived more than an hour late and missed them. Resigned to taking a taxi, I walk across the street to the Faith Surf shop to ask for directions.

Faith Surf could have been lifted out of any suburban U.S. mall—500 square feet, a storefront window display of boards and shorts, requisite Hawaiian decorations throughout. The automatic glass door slides open at my touch, unleashing a blast of incense and air conditioning. Kenji Sakai, the store's

"Shrink seven western states into California and that's what you've got here," says Werlin. "Japan's the best-kept secret in the world."

27-year-old owner, sits alone behind the counter, shaking his long, blond dreadlocks to the rhythm of Bunny Wailer. "The contest is kind of far," he says. "A taxi's going to be expensive." He scans his empty shop; every surfer in town is already at the beach. "I'll take you." I try to refuse. He insists. We exchange business cards in the formal two-handed Japanese way—with a slight bow, a thumb and forefinger grasping each top corner—then walk to his car, a blue Toyota Caldina encrusted with salt spray and smelling of cigarettes and mildewed beach towels. We speed south along the coast, reggae blaring.

The 20-minute drive passes at least half a dozen more surf shops, several island-themed bars and restaurants, and an English- language school—no Japanese town is complete without one—called Surf English. When we get to the contest site, Sakai drives through the packed parking lot and up to the sand. "Can you park here?" I ask. "I can't stay," he says. "I have to go back to work."

When you get lost in Japan, people help you. And not help like draw you a map; help like close their businesses for 45 minutes to save you cab fare. Things just work out here. The generosity is as dependable as the subways.

BUT IT WASN'T the kindness of strangers that kept me in Tokyo, where I worked as a newspaper reporter for six years. Nor was it the city's bewildering blend of ancient tradition and relentless modernization: shrines next door to cell-phone shops, tattooed surfers bowing to strangers. Those things played a part. But mostly it was that, though I lived in a metropolitan area of 40 million people, I could hit the beach after breakfast and be home in time for lunch. I could ride my bike from my apartment and within 45 minutes be alone in the hills west of the city, where the only sounds were my tires on the forest floor, the chirping of summer cicadas, and the homophonic rumble of the chanting monks whose temples I rode past.

The reason I stayed in Tokyo, and the reason I've come back to visit, is that the city sits within 90 minutes of enough adventure potential to give a Kiwi pause. Japan's 21,058 miles of coastline surround an island chain that is 75 percent mountainous and home to centuries-old forested singletrack, world-class rock climbing, volcanic hot springs, subtropical beaches, 714 ski resorts (the U.S. has 477), and the world's highest average snowfall. "Shrink seven western states into California and that's what you've got here," says 58-year-old American Bill Werlin, general manager of Patagonia Japan and a six-year resident of Yokohama. "This is the best-kept secret in the world."

To a surprising degree, even the Japanese have been slow to catch on. In the face of the country's economic might and the solemnity of Japan Inc.'s corporate PR—"Our trains are on time, our cities are safe and clean; be sure and see the temples"—few people have realized there's a whole lot more fun to be had. When I told a chef at a sushi restaurant in the U.S. that I had learned to snowboard in Japan, the Osaka native was shocked to hear that his homeland had good snow, despite the fact that the 1998 Winter Olympics were held 200 miles northeast of his home city. "It's not that the Japanese don't want to do these things," says Werlin. "They love that idea of the individual against the elements—go anywhere in the world and there's some Japanese guy doing the toughest thing possible. But they think of these activities as being connected to destinations outside the country. We have to communicate to them, 'You can have that lifestyle here.'"